Traditions Pursuit G4 Ultralight, finally took it to the range

I was finally able to get this gun out to the range.

https://www.traditionsfirearms.com/c...uit-Ultralight

The weight is awesome, it feels like a single shot shotgun, I would like to have wood furniture on it but this gun was bought for my wife so any weight savings is huge.

The gun cannot be cocked with the safety on, even partially on, which caught me a couple times, I guess I do not know why they have a push button trigger safety and a rebounding hammer but that must be part of the deal with the lawyers.

The trigger has no slack to it, was not used to that, been shooting a lot of military guns and they all have tons of play, just something to get used to.

Loading the gun was tight, Hornady sabots with a 300gr XTP .429 bullet were tight and so were the .357 180gr Hornady XTP bullets loaded into the duplex sabots.

The powder I am going to use for this gun is Triple 7, I am not going to blackhorn for the cost and Triple 7 gets close to velocity. I loaded up 80gr to play with, this was not a load development trip but rather to get out and shoot it. At 50 yards every single shot was a dead deer, both with the .429 300gr and the .357 180gr XTP bullet, they had an identical point of impact at 50 yards, which was surprising to me.

The grouping of the .357 bullets were no different than the .429, we shall see with load development how this may work but there is a heck of a lot of promise here.

Some things I like:

The weight, again this gun is not primarily for me but for my wife, the chrome moly barrel is fluted as well, it is very light and does not feel nose heavy like a lot of other inlines that we held.

The muzzle is bored to accepts sabots, I think this is normal now but you can set a loaded sabot in the muzzle and it will stay there, a guide for you to start it.

Some things that I am not sure about:

The trigger, we will see how it works out after use.

Cleaning, maybe it is just because it is a smoke pole but there are a lot of small holes and even with Q-tips I had a hard time getting into those spaces, will be getting some picks to get into the creases moving forward.

As a side note, I had used Hornady One Shot as a cleaner and had some corrosion last time, I had not run a CLP product after cleaning. This time I used a mix of the Hornady on the outside as it is a spray bottle and Hoppes BP cleaner that I was given for the bore. I then gave everything a wipe with a CLP product and put it away, no sign of anything after 24 hours but will be watching it for a while.

BP and substitutes are messy, that is a given, I would not say that Triple 7 was any cleaner than Goex or Pyrodex, it almost seemed to burn on harder in some places than Pyrodex and Goex, which I have used in a side lock and a pistol.

Overall was really gun to shoot, the .357 180gr bullet made a nice hole in one side of a propane tank at 100 yards and a bulge on the back, Hornady claims it is designed to open up to a maximum velocity of 1750fps but these are used in the 357 Maximum and guys hunt deer with it in 16in barrel carbines of that caliber, running about 2000fps.

No chance to chronograph these rounds, that will come later when I have more time.